TMT International Observatory, LLC

The TMT International Observatory, LLC (TIO) is a non-profit organization managing the development and construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope, a large optical-infrared telescope to be built near the summit of Mauna Kea on Hawaii Island by an international partnership. The observatory project office in Pasadena leads and coordinates the work at partner locations. The Members of TIO are Caltech, UC, the National Institutes of Natural Sciences of Japan, the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Department of Science and Technology and the Department of Atomic Energy of India, and the National Research Council (Canada); the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) is a TIO Associate. Major funding has been provided by the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation. The TMT will be one of the world’s largest ground-based optical/infrared telescopes, and will represent the forefront of technology in every aspect of its design: * The structure will consist of a primary mirror with 492 individual 1.45-meter segments that together measure 30 meters in diameter, providing more than eight times the collecting area of the current largest telescope. * All mirrored segments will be guided with precision computer control in order to work together as one single mirror, building on the technology developed for the 10-meter mirrors in the two Keck telescopes in Hawaii. * Adaptive optics (AO) will allow the TMT to achieve a resolution superior to that of the Hubble Space Telescope, using six laser beams to create six luminous spots in a layer of sodium atoms high in Earth's upper atmosphere. These bright artificial stars serve as references for measuring the turbulence in the atmosphere, allowing the AO system to compensate for blurring of starlight by Earth's fluctuating atmosphere. For more information, visit tmt.org , MaunaKeaAndTMT.org, www.facebook.com/TMTHawaii or follow @TMTHawaii.